Comments on A Farewell to Alms

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Comments on A Farewell to Alms

• Gregory Clark
• Comments by Karla Hoff

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Radically new view of the Great Divergence

• A change in human nature (its culture and perhaps
  even its genes) explains the Industrial
  Revolution and also the Great Divergence
  
• How did this occur?

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History affects preferences through selection
effects in a Malthusian world

• Cultivation and diffusion of the values of the
  successful in 1200-1800 in England in an
  institutionally stable society of private
  property rights with tight Malthusian constraints
  and income-based difference in fertility
• Bourgeois values penetrated every layer of society

Institutions
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Are such preferences all that matter? Empirical
hurdles to this thesis

• .Engerman-Sokoloff (1997, 2005, 2005, 2006) on
  New World economies
  
• Great diversity in paths of development across
  the many New World societies with a British
  heritage.
  
• Most did not fare so well as the US and Canada,
  and resemble their neighbors that began with
  similar factor endowments but with other national
  heritages
• E.g. Jamaica, Guyana, Belize
• s..

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Embedding Clarks thesis in Engerman and
Sokoloffs thesis
Factor endowments, broadly defined

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Farewell to Alms?
Factor endowments, broadly defined